The Art of Dalliance
by TheMarauder1967
Summary: One-shots inspired by quotes
1. Chapter 1

_You're in love with a boy._

 _Here is the best part._

 _He loves you more than his own life._

 _You love a boy._

 _Now here's the worst part._

 _He loves you so much more than his own life._

(Extract from _All roads lead to Rome's_ poem on 

The full poem can be found here: post/112837374630/youre-in-love-with-a-boy-who-is-a-prayer-on-your)

There's a boy. He has dark hair and a smile that tells you he would promise you the world and let you down, but he has eyes that tell you that you wouldn't care. There's a boy with a wink that shatters hearts and a voice that heals them, but he's not the one you care about.

You don't like him because he's rude and he's arrogant and he makes you feel like you could fly. You don't want to fly because flying is dangerous if you fall from too high up, so you pick the guy next to him.

The guy with the blonde hair and the safe smile, with the safe eyes and the voice that sounds soft and warm and _safe._ He takes you to a coffee shop, and he buys you flowers and he respects you. He walks you to your classes and he holds your hand and he laughs at your jokes, and for anyone else he would be perfect, but you still fall. You fall because he's there, and he's _him._

The guy with the blonde hair is called _William,_ and he's in Ravenclaw. He has a loud laugh and he likes Cricket. He's a muggleborn, like you. He gets on with your mum, and you're only fifteen, but you know you love him. He fiddles with your hair, tells you it's greasy when it's not, and he lets you do his makeup for him when you're both bored one day.

He sends you letters in the summer, and calls you _love._ You call him _Will_ because you don't know how to be in a relationship where you call someone something other than their name. He likes charms, and he's good at potions and you go for walks to Hogsmeade, and have a picnic on the grass in front of the black lake.

He tells you he loves you, and you don't hesitate when you say it back.

You meet his mum, and she hugs you and tells you _thank you._ You don't ask what for, because you think you know. Inside this man is a broken boy with a father who didn't love him enough. You meet his father and you want him to like you, but you also want to hate him for what he did to Will.

You go back to school and you're a prefect. Will sits next to you at the table, and there's one of _his_ friends on the other side of you. You make friends with him. His name is Remus and he also laughs at your jokes. He tells you you're not as funny as you think you are, and he helps you when you accidentally set a tree on fire and panic and forget the counterspell.

You sit with him at breakfast, with your other friends from your house. Will walks you to your lessons, and he still laughs at your jokes, but he gets distracted. He put things in front of you. He leaves you after a quidditch game to be with his friends, and forgets stupid, trivial things about you that don't really matter but _do._

He gives you a rose instead of a tulip, and it's tiny but it means a lot.

He treats you like shit, ignores you and you've only been together for ten months but you _miss_ him when he's not there. And he's not there.

You try to break up with him four times, but every time you chicken out because you don't want your heart to break as well as his. In the end, he does it. He gives you a bunch of shitty reasons that mean nothing, and a lie that isn't real.

You smile and nod, and tell him it's fine, that you understand, but you _don't._ You don't and you _hate_ him. You return to the common room, with tears in your eyes and you break the second he can't see you.

You collapse on the floor and it's so _pathetic._ You mocked the girls like this. The girls that can't live without a boy, the girls who cry when they're single again. But then, you'd never been one. You didn't _get it,_ and now you did.

The boy with the dark hair and the smile that promises the world finds you. He forces you off of the floor and into a chair by the fire and he just sits beside you. He doesn't talk, but he lets you hold his hand and you feel honoured. You remember screaming at him and you remember what you were before Will, but you can't get it back.

You move on. The boy with the dark hair- _James-_ sits with you at breakfast and Remus pretends to laugh at your jokes. You still cry, but you start to forget. James laughs like he has all the time in the world to live, and you remember that Will was always in a hurry, but you don't want to fall for James.

Your friend Mary plaits your hair in the evenings because Will always liked it like that, still. James walks you to your classes, but he tells you he isn't going to carry your bag. You like that. Sirius- James' best friend- calls you _Red,_ or _ginger_ and he laughs at you when you try to be clever. He's rude and brash and he's exciting because he's different.

He's honest.

He tells you that Will was a prick, that you could have done better, and you believe him.

James hugs you goodbye at Christmas, and you tuck your head into his chest and Dorcas tells you that you held on for a beat too long. You don't care. You laugh louder, and you _fix_ yourself when you're not at school. You figure out that you can exist without someone to cuddle, and you start to miss the memories more than the person.

And then, you return to school, and it turns out that you're not okay.

You see him in the corridor, blonde hair long and blue eyes _blue_ and he smiles and you _freeze._ You just walk past him and pretend you can't see him. You wonder if he thinks you're bad at breakups, or whether you just hate him. You hope he knows it's the first, even though a part of you does still hate him.

But then, you see dark hair and a smile that feels like relief and you sigh. You're going to be okay. You watch his quidditch games and you cheer too loudly, and when you see blonde hair in a crowd, you find yourself gradually forgetting what it felt like when you're heart beat too fast.

You stay up with his friends until one o'clock in the morning, and your friends are his friends, and his friends are your friends. Sirius beats you at chess, and you beat him at Gobstones. Remus winks at you when he falls on the floor laughing, and you sneak Peter bites of James' cake.

You laugh and laugh and laugh. You see his eyes, and they're brown. They're dark, and light. They tell you you're going to fall, and for some reason, this time round you're okay with it. You start holding onto his hand when he passes you something for a couple of seconds too long, you brush your hand against his in the corridor, and you wonder if he likes spending time with you as much as you like spending time with him.

He wins the quidditch cup, and Sirius throws a party in the common room. You see Remus leading a girl up the stairs and you smile. You wonder if he's as nervous as you were, the first time with Will.

Will turns up, and he tries to talk to you, so you kiss someone else out of spite. You're too drunk to know who it is and he cradles the back of your head, and slides his hands down to your bum and you're a little bit uncomfortable but you're even happier that the smile slides off of Will's face and he walks away.

You push him away, and suddenly there's a boy behind you. He's warm and he's got his arm round you, and is pushing you behind him before you can even blink. He threatens the guy, and then turns to face you. His face is swimming round and round and you know his name but you can't remember it, so you smile at him and tell him that you like his shoes.

You wake up the next morning and your head is pounding.

You're not in your bed, but in Peter's. Sirius couldn't get you back to your dorm because of the _bloody_ stairs, so he put you in Peter's, Remus tells you, eyes amused and warm and sparkly. You groan and roll over because everything _hurts._

And then school finishes. You go to James' in the summer, and he meets your parents and you're friends, but every time you look at him you see his jawline, and the way his leg twitches when he's nervous, and the way he smiles at you when you're alone and you fall a little bit more (but it's still not enough for it to be serious).

You return to school and you're fine. You go to lessons and skip classes and you're head girl now. You go to meetings with James, and you stay with him afterwards, and you play cards and sit around and talk about nothing. And before you know it, you're laughing at three o'clock in the morning with his arm slung round your shoulder and your legs slung over his.

It's Christmas and he's seen you cry when your parents died, and you've seen him cry when _his_ died only three weeks later. It's snowing and that feels important when his head is ducking towards yours and you're tilting your mouth towards his.

You fall. You fall into the eyes that promise the world and the smile that lies and the laugh that makes you fly. You fall and, right at the very bottom, he catches you. He pulls back and smiles and you're eyes are shining and his are too.

He walks you to class, and makes you carry his bag. He trips you up in the corridors, and he saves you the seat beside him at the breakfast table. He makes you food, and sneaks you down to the kitchens. He calls you _red, ginger, weirdo,_ and you call him _dickhead, annoying and Potter._ You tell him you hate him at least once a day, and he tells you he loves you ten times more.

He kisses your forehead, and your heart beats faster, and he dances you round the common room. You sit by the fire and read and he tries to entice you into games with him. You laugh and he winks at you from where he's sat with Sirius with an old piece of parchment spread across his lap. He holds your hand when you go on patrols and swings you round when he wins a quidditch game.

You see Will, and he's got a new girlfriend. It doesn't hurt you as much as you thought it would. Maybe, though, that's because two seconds later, James is hugging you from behind and you're laughing and Sirius is rolling his eyes.

You leave school in July, with stars in your eyes and a fear gripping your heart so tightly you're afraid it'll burst from the pressure.

You move in with James, and he leaves his socks lying everywhere. You know when he's brushed his teeth because there's always toothpaste smeared around the sink and it's so _disgusting_ when you have to clean. You trip over his shoes because he lives them in the middle of the hall, instead of pressed up against the wall. He complains because you leave your clothes lying everywhere- your jumper is in the kitchen, in with the saucepans, and your favourite dress is hanging off of the shower curtain.

Sirius makes fun of how messy your flat is, but you love it. Peter tries to fix the broken sink in the second bathroom, and it bursts instead, and you have to move in with Remus for a week because no one knows any plumbing spells.

Your life is _chaos,_ and Marlene phones you every Friday to ask if you want to go out, and sometimes you say yes, but more often than not, you end up curled up on the sofa with hot chocolate and James arguing with the TV.

You love it, though. You love living and fighting in a war that belongs to you. You like knowing you're doing the right thing.

He proposes with a sweet ring that he got from either Honeydukes or Zonkos, and you roll your eyes and glares and Sirius kicks the back of your legs so you collapse onto James. He winks at you and says _I think you just fell for me._

(Remus tells you later that they practised it for weeks, and he and Peter had to take turns to be you. You want to be surprised, but you're really, really not)

You get married in Spring, and then it seems like you blink and there's a baby in your stomach and you're crying because you can't bring a baby into the war. But, you do. You do, and he's the best thing that ever happened to you.

You wake up in the early hours of the morning and trip over James' shoes on the way to soothing Harry, and you bicker with James about stupid things because you're so _tired._ Harry grows, and he has James' hair and your eyes and you love him.

Sirius spends his time lying on the floor with Harry on his chest talking to him about stupid things he and James did at school and you want to hit him, but James is laughing from where he's making you dinner and Remus is perched on the seat beside you, mouth tilted up and Peter is rummaging through your cupboards and asking why you don't have anything even remotely good for Harry in them.

James chases Harry round the house on his toy broomstick and he smashes a vase and you laugh because it was _so_ ugly, but you're also worried for the poor cat. You fall asleep on the sofa, and James carries you to bed and you didn't realise how difficult raising a kid _and_ working _and_ fighting for the order would be. You feel like you have a purpose, so you don't quit anything.

Sometime in May, Remus offers to take Harry for the weekend, and you and James go to France. You visit the Eiffel tower, and he holds your hand and you eat ice cream even though it's raining. You buy a cheap bottle of wine and get drunk sitting outside the steps of the Sacre Couer and watch the sunset with your head on his shoulder.

You smile at him and he smiles at you, and you're _happy._

You're in love with a boy.

(With dark hair, and dark eyes and a smile that promises the world and eyes that tell you he's lying, but he's always there to catch you when you fall).

Here is the best part.

(he's standing at the end of the bed at four o'clock in the morning, trying to reach his toes without bending his knees and he _cannot.)_

He loves you more than his own life.

(He pushes you aside when the oven beeps, and when the toast is burnt and tries to save you when Sirius ruffles your hair. You throw hex after hex at the death eaters chasing him, and he dives in front of you to stop them from hurting you, and he's so stupid but he's so _James.)_

You love a boy.

(You've got your head tipped back and your hair is spilling round your shoulders and he's laughing at you and you tell him _I hate you_ and he knows you mean the exact opposite. He kisses you when you have morning breath and tells you that you smell when you've just had a shower and he loves you)

Now here is the worst part.

(he's singing in the shower and he's so _bad_ that Harry starts crying. He gets back from work later and later every night and it's so exhausting having to do everything by yourself that sometimes you just sit and cry, cradling Harry to your chest)

He loves you so much more than his own life.


	2. Chapter 2

She's isn't perfect.

She's petty, sometimes.

You've known this since you were eleven years old and she glared at you because you tried to tell her a joke instead of paying attention in a history class about a war you already knew everything about. She told you that you were 'insensitive', and that just because you'd grown up knowing this, it didn't mean everyone else had. You rolled your eyes, and from that moment she swore to hate you. It was irrational. She became the girl that you made fun of in the corridors, because there's something about her that makes you _need_ her approval. She ignores you and focuses on being friends with people you don't like.

Her hair isn't as soft as it looks from a distance.

You discover this on a Sunday evening when you're sixteen years old. You're sat by the fire and Mary decides – for some reason unbeknownst to everyone but Mary that she's going to teach you how to plait. Mary uses her as a model, and you use Matt. Until, that is, Matt decides he wants his hair properly plaited and forces her to swap. She obliges, the poor soul and, before long, Matt has two, identical plaits down the side of his head. Your heart is in your throat as you tentatively pick up a strand of her hair and weave it like Mary showed you. Her hair looks like spilled wine down her back, shiny and gentle, and a mess. She keeps the plait in for two days, and it feels like a victory, seeing her walk round with lopsided, uneven plaits running down her back.

She has a chip in her tooth.

This, you learn when you're by yourselves. She's trying to help you with an assignment, and she's leaning across the table so she's face to face with you to force you to pay attention. You want to tell her that she's the only thing distracting you, but you can't. She's closer than she's ever been and you can't help but look down at her lips. She's grinning manically and she has a tiny chip in her left tooth. You enquire after its origins and she shrugs like it's unimportant. You remember anyway; she tripped over a tree root while playing with her sister.

She gets frustrated easier than you first thought.

This time, it's you helping her. She has her hair in a lose bun on the top of her head, with strands falling all around her face. She's got bags under her eyes and she's tired. It's two o'clock in the morning on a Saturday and she has no reason to be stressing. You've made your way to her dorm; the only thing keeping you going is that she picked _you._ Out of everyone she has to call, and she picked _you._ You ask her, softly, while she's still awake and she gestures to mounds of paper surrounding her and her eyes are green and she picked _you._ She returns the question, and you tell her that you heard a damsel in distress needed your help and you manage to get her to laugh. You stay with her for another three hours, trying to get her to understand, and she eventually falls asleep with her pen in her hand and her legs slung over yours.

She holds grudges.

This, you discover easily enough. You're walking alone together, across an open courtyard. Her, with her books folded neatly in her hands, and you with a bag slung over your shoulder. You're going from her English class to the nearest Starbucks, a route you take every Wednesday and every other Friday. Someone shouts after her and you turn to see her ex running after you. She turns round, fire in her eyes, and it may have been two years ago that he broke her heart, but she hasn't forgiven him. She's moved on, she says, but she doesn't want to be friends with someone capable of doing that to someone. You glare, but there's nothing you can do. You are fully aware that she can pick her own fights.

She likes winding your friends up about pointless things.

It becomes a running joke between her and Matt, and you love that they're getting on. They're partnered together for some history project, and they spend an entire hour feeding the other one false information about the wrong period of history. She messes his hair up, and she trips him up when he's trying to talk to a girl. He calls her _Red_ and pulls her hair and ties her shoelaces together so she trips up. He puts salt in her cereal and pretends he can't hear when she asks a question. You've never seen a friendship anything like theirs. They play chess until the early mornings and she always wins because he always lets her. She'll punch him, and he'll kick the back of her legs so she collapses. He treats her like a little sister, and she treats him like a big brother. They have a friendship of mutual hatred of certain people and shit family backgrounds, and it shouldn't work, but it does.

She freaks out about weird things.

She hates wearing socks to bed, and always makes you take them off when you stay the night in her dorm. She always makes sure every light is off before she leaves the room and she demands that she be left alone for ten minutes in the morning before every exam. She hates it when you call her _baby_ but loves it when you call her _babe._ She hates it when you try to embarrass her, because it never works, and when she doesn't understand something on the first try.

She loves you.

This is the one that confuses you the most. Because, out of all of her imperfections, you can't find one that isn't perfect. She loves you, and she tells you every day. Some days, it's wearing your tshirt with her hair in a messy bun and no make-up, and others, it's as she's leaving for work, dressed in jeans and a company shirt. Today, it's with a formal dress on and a crowd cheering as you're pronounced husband and wife.


End file.
